Zohran Mamdani’s team is exploring whether he can order the arrest of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York later this year.

Speaking to the New York Times, the mayor said there was “an active conversation” about whether his office has the authority to enforce a warrant issued by the international criminal court (ICC) in 2024.

Netanyahu is expected to travel to the city for the UN general assembly in September.

“I believe that prime minister Netanyahu belongs in the Hague,” Mamdani said on an episode of the Times’s the Interview podcast on Saturday.

“He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the international criminal court, and what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these past many years.”

He added: “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.”

The ICC warrant, issued amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, describes Netanyahu as a co-conspirator in “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”

Mamdani said while campaigning to be mayor last year that he would arrest the prime minister if he visited New York. Yet his decision after taking office to retain police commissioner Jessica Tisch, who oversaw a crackdown on pro-Palestine students, led to doubts over whether he would follow through on that pledge.

​Earlier in July, Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir cancelled a planned trip to New York after rights groups filed a criminal complaint against him with the Department of Justice.

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